FORUM

Momotaro/Peach Boy: A Portfolio

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Momotaro/Peach Boy is a portfolio of nine prints based on the popular Japanese folk tale about a baby boy who emerges from a giant peach and grows up to become a hero. The prints in this series form the pages of a fictional narrative, inspired by family memories of the forced internment of Japanese Americans and the experiences of Japanese American GIs in World War II. Each of the prints incorporate photographs of my father, grandfather and son, as well as cartoon characters, material from the National Archives, traditional Japanese motifs and illustrations appropriated from magazines and children’s books.

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My Winter Travels on the Sea

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Boat—a tool for my journey on the sea and also my second oceanic ancestor. I never imagined that I would ever travel alone on the sea. In the beginning I just wanted to rebel against my parents because they stopped me from studying in Taiwan. Further, it had always been my childhood dream, inspired by my youngest great-uncle, to travel alone on the waters. Rebellion was not something easy on our island within the tribe I belonged, despite my being the only son of my father. However . . . .

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Second Generation Asian America: Inheriting the Movement

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Each generation of Asian Americans faces its unique set of alienations: invidious stereotypes resulting in a unique double-consciousness. Such “two-ness” was akin to the conflicted feelings of generations of African Americans whose worth was earlier measured through the eyes of others, as W.E.B. Du Bois points out.

For Asian Americans, such stereotypes included that of the perpetual foreigner, model minority, job-stealer, and alien, which have recurred during generations and waves of immigration. Other names — entitled, whitewashed, ghetto, terrorist — are newer. These perceptions made by others had also created a sensation of “double-consciousness” among Asian Americans.

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The University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies Program: Reflections

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Eiichiro Azuma
In March of 2013, the University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies (ASAM) celebrated its fifteenth-year anniversary. We are a small but vibrant ethnic studies program that not only mirrors the traditional ethnic studies vision of uniting scholarship, student activism and community service, but also endeavors to constantly adapt to the shifting intellectual needs of UPenn’s undergraduate student body. Our inception was inseparable from student activism and community support back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Currently, ASAM consists of four standing faculty members with a full-time Associate Director. All faculty are tenured — Grace Kao in Sociology, David Eng and Josephine Park in English, and myself in History. We belong to our respective home departments, as ASAM does not have its own faculty line. Dr. Fariha Khan, a specialist in South Asian American folklore, has a dedicated role as Associate Director, and also teaches core courses for the program. ASAM offers a minor in Asian American Studies, and we have contributed to the diversification of undergraduate curriculum in UPenn’s School of Arts and Sciences. Comprised of those who pursue the minor, our Undergraduate Advisory Board takes the initiative in organizing student-led conferences, lectures, and other events while advising faculty from the student perspective. ASAM has a close partnership with the Pan-Asian American Community House, a student service division that is a part of the Vice Provost for University Life.

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A Guide to Responding to Microaggressions

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In recent years, academic literature has focused increasingly on the subject of microaggressions. Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental actions (whether intentional or unintentional) that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward members of oppressed or targeted groups1 including: people of color, women, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) persons, persons with disabilities, and religious minorities. Some scholars today argue that racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination are no longer as blatant as they may have been in the past. Instead, people may demonstrate their biases and prejudices in more subtle ways, otherwise known as microaggressions. The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to discuss how different types of microaggressions affect people’s lives, and (2) to provide a hands-on guide to strategies, approaches, and interventions to address microaggressions.

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Culture and Historic Preservation: Recommendations for New York City Chinatown’s Future

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In Fall 2008, the Chinatown Working Group was formed to create a community-based plan to ensure appropriate development for New York City’s Chinatown and its surrounding areas — parts of Lower Manhattan that are not currently protected by zoning. The CWG is comprised of 46 stakeholders, including community organizations, property owners, tenant groups, and Manhattan Community Boards 1, 2 and 3. In Spring 2013, with funding from LMDC, the CWG selected the Pratt Center/Collective team as their planning consultant to create recommendations and implementation strategies in the areas of Affordability; Culture & Historic Preservation; Economic Development; and Zoning & Land Use. Pratt Center/Collective concluded their research and report in December 2013.

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Lonesome Journey: The Korean American Century

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Our Collective History
The story of organized Korean immigration is over one hundred years old now, but much of it remains to be told to the outside world. A singular irony is that its beginning chapter, spanning the first seventy-five years, is still missing, although its current pages brim with shining tales of one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States.

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“From Dump to Glory”: The Transformation of Flushing’s Downtown and Waterfront

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Recent weather patterns have underscored the prospect of a “new normal” defined by more frequent superstorms and subsequent devastation. For New York City — an urban metropolis of 8.3 million residents whose 520 miles of waterfront wraps around all five boroughs — the upheaval and destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 raised concerns around the sustainability of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s waterfront redevelopment legacy particularly in Zone A areas.2 Although not as well-known as New York City’s numerous gentrified waterfront neighborhoods, the Queens waterfront in Flushing, dotted by numerous brownfields (former industrial sites), is also slated for development. Flushing’s waterfront is a key element in the 2004 New York City Economic Development Corporation’s (NYC EDC) Downtown Flushing Framework, that envisions the waterfront as a linkage between a revitalized downtown Flushing and new developments in Willets Point and Flushing Meadows Corona Park.3 Although Flushing’s waterfront is integral to the city’s development vision, few residents, and community stakeholders are even aware of a waterfront or of its potentially transformative role in Northern Queens.

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Pacific Sovereignty Movements and Asian Americans: Communities, Coalitions, and Conflicts

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Bonds Under Bondage
In the late Nineteenth Century, David Kalākaua, the King of Hawai‘i, watched as the monarchal power over his kingdom slowly fell to foreign invaders from the West. American businessmen entered the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and began forming a coup d’état. In 1881, Kalākaua embarked on an extended excursion to Asia, visiting Malaysia, China, Japan, and Thailand. On his trip, he argued for an alliance among Asian and Pacific Islander communities as a means of resisting the rising tide of American and European imperialism.1 In China, King Kalākaua met with the chief of foreign affairs Li Hongzhang regarding imperial threats from the West that would affect both the Pacific and Asia.

Full PDF article download: 2013 CUNY FORUM – Trevor J. Lee

“Had He Lived Always among the Chinese or with Savages”: A Musing on a “Chinese” Descartes of Modernity in the Discourse on MethodKy

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Thinking “With the Same Mind”
Wait, what, Chinese? What’s happening? What was “China” or “Chinese” for René Descartes, “the father of modern philosophy”? Why is he stitching those “Chinese or savages” into his semi-autobiography, Discourse on Method? There, you might say, he is just making some ‘multi-culty’ comparative point on how come ‘we are the world,’ how we are just all of “the same mind (son même esprit),” “charactological” differences or divergences notwithstanding. Sure, simple enough. Then what kind of or which cliché is being recruited in this “characterization” of those Chinese or savages or French or German — and to what end? Where and when did that caricatured passage click into a position on this map of thinking drawn, hypothetically, together with all others at work or play? Where does the “or” of “the Chinese or savage” come from? When and where, at what point, does such exclusionary or optional thinking begin to matter at all? Indeed, you might still ask, what’s the matter?

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